Season 1, Episode 11, "Carnivores"

Story by James Manos, Jr.

Teleplay by Kevin Arkadie and Glen Mazzara

Directed by Scott Brazil

Air date: 5-21-02

The whole series has no more gruesome scene than the pre-credit scene of the Korean home invasion. Besides a dead old woman, her surviving husband has had his feet nailed to the floor. The old man cut a very striking image there stuck looking over the body of his wife, so pained and humiliated as to blow his own brains out right in front of the officers.

What's really interesting, though, is the intricate follow through of the story. For one thing, there is a specific explanation of the nailing of the feet. They were very deft in handling the underlying racial politics, saying a lot with a few gestures as the grieving Korean daughter rejects the black cop (Claudette). Note the high mindedness with which Claudette gently brushes that issue away, handing her off to the white cop she will be more willing to talk to.

They also got a whole different flavor with the later scene where the same Korean boys invaded the home of another relative, but these relatives gave up the money and escaped with their lives. How lucky they were was underscored in a fairly artistic manner by having a grandson whose main concern was retrieving his X-Box. If any of these people had any idea of what they had narrowly missed out on, they'd be acting differently.

As Claudette and Dutch track the crimes back through the foolish grandson, it becomes something of an immigrant community Fargo story: a little half-assed robbery becomes a horrible murder/suicide over wanting some stupid jewelry and video games.

Interestingly for something so striking and nuanced, this A-story line was manufactured under particular time pressure, with the writers already several days late for delivering a script. In short, they were wrestling with trying to make a three show arc of the Gilroy hit-and-run story, finally collapsed it to season ending episodes 12 and 13 right after this. Thus, this Korean story was a bit of a rush job.

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